The described technology relates to computer systems for tracking the repair of components.
Many large companies sell an extensive line of products throughout the world. Because these products may be very expensive, these companies may have repair facilities for maintaining and repairing the products rather than simply replacing the products. For example, one company may have over 70 repair facilities located throughout the world to service customers near the repair facility. When the products are large (e.g., an electric motor), a nearby repair facility can significantly reduce the shipping time and shipping costs associated with the repair of a product and its components. Reduced shipping time is especially important when the customer loses significant revenue while a product is down. For example, if a steam turbine of a utility company is down as a result of a failure of one of its components, the utility company can lose significant revenue as a result of its inability to use that steam turbine to generate electricity.
A typical repair facility manually tracks components to be repaired. When a component is received from a customer, a repair technician may diagnose the problem and pass the component along to another repair technician who may be responsible for disassembling the component into its subcomponents. The repair technician may then send each of the subcomponents to other repair technicians who are responsible for inspecting and repairing the subcomponents. When the subcomponents are eventually inspected and repaired, then a repair technician may reassemble the component and ship the component back to the customer. If the customer wants to know the status of the repair of their component, then a repair technician may need to manually track down each repair technician who is currently inspecting and repairing a subcomponent and ask for a status update. That repair technician then compiles the status update information and provides a status report to the customer. It can be both time-consuming and costly to manually track down the status of a component being repaired. Moreover, customers may be frustrated by the delay in responding to their status requests.
A problem with so many repair facilities is the lack of uniformity in the repair process. Each repair technician may perform different inspections on the same type of component and use different techniques for repairing the same type of component. This lack of uniformity in the repair process may result in subcomponents that are inadequately repaired or that are over repaired (e.g., unnecessarily replaced parts). This lack of uniformity has several disadvantages. First, a customer may be surprised to learn that the same type of repair can cost more or less depending on the repair technician and the repair facility. Second, an inadequately repaired subcomponent may have additional costly breakdowns. Third, it is expensive to over repair subcomponents. Fourth, the company may provide service contracts to its customers, and the repair of a component may be an opportunity to maintain certain subcomponents whose maintenance is not necessary for the repair but is necessary to prevent a breakdown in the near future.
It would be desirable to have a computer system that would allow both for the tracking of the repair of the components and for uniformity in the repair of such components. In particular, it would be desirable to provide uniform plans for repairing components of the same type, to track which repair technicians are currently repairing which subcomponents and the status of such repair, and to provide customers with timely status information on the repair of their components.